You need a third part rip to print images greater than 30,000 px. CS won’t do it out-of-the-box
Damn and Blast!
Thanks for incredibly quick reply
I’m not clear on something. Is it just PSB (large document support) that goes over 30,000 pixels and up to 56 channels?
You can also save as TIFF and Photoshop Raw.
Thanks! That got me off to experimenting with a few dummy files.
Tiff will go up to 4 GB 16-bit support and Layers.
RAW won’t support layers.
Many other formats in CS will take up to 56 channels.
A read of the pdf manual got me this precaution that may be of interest to others:
If you edit or save an image using an earlier version of Photoshop, unsupported features are discarded. Keep in mind the following features when working with earlier versions of Photoshop:
Photoshop CS introduces nested layers, Hard Mix blending mode, Photo Filter adjustment layers, 56 channel limit, text on a path, support for files greater than 2GB, support for files greater than 30,000 pixels in any dimension, non-square pixels support, 16-bit layers, 16-bit patterns, and 16-bit Brushes.
Just back to printing a moment – can I still open my 30,000 plus image in Illustrator (or Corel Draw) and print tiled without an expensive RIP, or do I have to keep it under 30,000 pixels?
Peter
How big is your print going to be?
30000px at 300PPI is 100 inches. That big?
Interesting. Have you tried printing at lower rez? I have sometimes had surprisingly good results at as low as 120PPI [just being pedantic: PPI, not DPI], which do not have to be viewed at 20 paces.
$495!!! for a few big prints!! – bloody mad – (sorry for swearing I’m British)
Rather spend a couple of hours transferring to vector program and tiling with no gaps…
Colin,
yes have previously printed down to about 250PPI (pedants per inch) which is OK, but lower no good for those that will examine with magnifying glass. Turner used to say to those that got too close to his paintings "stand back or you’ll die from the varnish fumes."
I’ve thought of trying something along the same lines by spraying the canvas (eurofab) with Scotch guard carpet protector but to no avail…. It used to work with Selenium toner in the old days….
Turner had the right idea!
You know what selenium poisoning does to you?
makes you mad! – like not being able to print over 30,000 pixels!
another thought – why not? (printing out the box)
Selenium stays in your body, like many heavy metals. It catalyzes a reaction, which makes you smell of garlic. For the rest of your life. The guy who discovered it [can’t remember his name] used to empty railway carriages … 🙂
empty railway carriages of what?
Other passengers!
$495!!! for a few big prints!! – bloody mad
Well, you could always pay $10000 and up for a Cheetah RIP…
Seriously Peter, $500 is _cheap_
Good lord – and I thought I knew it all!
I used to sell Selenium Pills – made by Kodak, alongside Selenium Toner, suggesting it made one last longer!.
Hey, seriously, are there 2nd hand RIPS on the market, – never used one by would like to try!
empty railway carriages of what?
This has confused me for a long time! Why are RIPS a Ripoff? When Adobe took over Aldus (yeah! Photostyler was great), they got rid of a perfectly fine tiling routine.
Why on earth don’t they bring it back or borrow one from their mates at Illustrator?
Pass this on to Adobe if anyone knows a man…….
I mean it amazes me, it can’t be that difficult to print 30,000 pixels on the trot and then print another thirty thousand without leaving a gap – can it?
Do that 10 times and you’ve got 300,000 pixels which would do me fine if I could afford the paper….
Peter,
You can do tiled printing from inside Photoshop, manually. Set your grid to some convenient custom size. I prefer square 8" x 8" tiles because I am still using a venerable Epson Stylus Photo printer, so I can use an 8-inch grid, but you could also use a 2-inch grid, which would be compatible with either 8×8 tiles or 8×10 tiles. Just make your grid something that will "fit" your chosen tile size.
I then set the Rectangular Marquee to my tile size and then just "cookie cutter" select a tile and Print Selected Area, select another tile and print it, and so on.
In the past, before the Print Selected Area feature was available, I Image> Cropped the tiles and saved them to separate files so I could easily reprint a tile if I needed to (sometimes you might "spoil" a tile in the image assembly process). I have included the row and column number in the tile filenames (e.g. Image_r2_c3.psd) for convenient orientation. The manual tiled printing process in Photoshop becomes fairly easy with practice.
— Burton —
This has confused me for a long time! Why are RIPS a Ripoff?
1) Because while coding a PostScript encoder is easy, coding a PostScript interpreter (which is basically what a RIP is) is much harder, esp. if you want a good one.
2) because in order to have a Postscript interpreter, you need to pay a licence to Adobe, but to be honest, that is the smallest portion of the expense (look at PostScript laser printers, they’re not all that much more expensive than non-PostScript devices and a lot more usefiul IMHO)
3) because when you are a commercial output house (which is where the market for RIPs is) and have paid anywhere between $10K and $1000K for your equipment, paying $10 000 for a RIP is small potatoes (assuming it didn’t come bundled with a RIP in the first place).
Peter,
why not? (printing out the box)<<
The O/S printer drivers won’t do it…..
Thanks Burton,
that’s a great workaround, but unfortunately not suitable for my purposes. I’m making so called "Fine Art" prints (my purchasers, not my term!) which wouldn’t be acceptable stuck together from tiles.
My "tiles" are printed seamlessly on the same piece of paper (canvas) by using the tiling procedure in Illustrator or Corel Draw and setting the overlap to zero.
I have successfully printed many 18ft "banners" this way, but just moaning that I have to save my file, reopen in Illustrator etc and then tile – this is a bore as it takes an extra hour or two to transfer and means I take up loads of disk space when I don’t really need to save after resampling.
So, at the sake of being a bore, anyone loan me a 2nd hand rip for a few weeks? 🙂
ah got it! because he smelled of garlic! very slow…. they must have been English, the passengers…..
you see I thought he worked for the railway company….
Burton, have you tried printing 2 small tiles without a gap, on the same piece of paper? – wonder if their might be a way using my big printer and the 30,000 pixels a go?!!
Any experiences anyone?
Peter,
…have you tried printing 2 small tiles without a gap, on the same piece of paper?
Yes, I tried it several times. My printer, an original Epson Stylus Photo going on seven years old, ejects the paper as soon as it completes a print. I found no way to suppress that. I tried refeeding the sheet and the results were better than I expected. I was surprised at how close I could come that way. Apparently the sheet feed is quite reproducible. But it was not pixel perfect, which was not good enough for me. And my printer is limited to 8.5 inches wide, so, aside from the 8.3×23-inch panoramic prints, there is no way I can print anything even close to big. That’s why I do separate tiled prints.
…wonder if there might be a way using my big printer and the 30,000 pixels a go?!!
There might be, but I am unfamiliar with your Epson 9500. Somewhere I saw a workaround for the Epson 44-inch limit that involved a technique for printing the image in sections on roll paper with no interval between them. I don’t know which Epson printer(s) that workaround was applicable to.
— Burton —
